The Sleepover

It’s something I knew would happen eventually, and I’ve been dreading it. You know how kids are when they reach a certain age, wanting to OHMYGOD SPEND THE NIGHT AT MY BEST FRIEND’S HOUSE?!

Otherwise known to parents as the Sleepless Night of Countless Horrors.

I easily could have gone a couple more years without this coming up, were it not for my husband (extreme stink-eye is implied in this sentence). He took Connor over to a friend’s house for the Super Bowl, and his friend’s son, PJ, and Connor got along well. PJ is two years younger, and that matched well with Connor’s maturity level.

Hubs decided to invite his friend and PJ to go along to the kite festival, but his friend’s daughter had a softball game that day. So he and I tentatively discussed the idea of letting PJ sleep over Saturday night so we could take them to the festival on Sunday morning.

Tentatively.

But hubs went ahead and pitched the idea to his friend, and he was on board with it. (Of course he was! You want to take my kid for a night and day? And you’re not charging me? AHAHAHAHAHAHA, I’ll drop him off at 3:00!!)

I waited until last Wednesday to tell Connor. It took about 4 seconds for the news to really sink in, and then he started screaming and jumping and it was kind of a blur after that. He took his exuberance off to the shower, where he set about composing a song to capture the essence of how he felt about this new development.

)

“We’ll play Minecraft all night…”

So it’s no wonder I was having visions of something like this:

Courtesy of bigmediadaily.com

ALLLLLLLL DAY LOOOOOOOOONG on Saturday, we heard the following:

“When is PJ going to get here?”

“Is it almost time for PJ to be here for the sleepover?”

“Is it almost time for the sleepover now?”

“How about now? It’s been, like, a long time since I asked (8 minutes)?”

Finally I ran out to pick up the obligatory sleepover meal of large pepperoni pizzas, and Connor was so beside himself with anticipation that I could almost see him vibrating.

PJ finally made his grand entrance and, after taking his stuff to Connor’s room, they got down to some pizza consumption and Minecraft discussion.

I quickly snapped a pic of the two of them, before I became too annoyed to want any pictures. Strangely, the camera caught a pic of what was in my head:

Photo enhancement courtesy of Bil “One L” Hooper

I can’t even be sure they actually chewed their food, with so much excited chatter going on.

“But have you ever been to The End? Because, I have.”

“Oh, but have you ever killed an Enderman? I have. I’ve killed a bunch of them.”

“You know what I hate? Cave spiders. They’re the WORST.”

I have never seen my son walk away after one slice of pizza. Not ever. But those two simply could not get to the Xbox fast enough. The shenanigans were under way and they were delirious with glee over this night of male bonding.

After a while, I offered them some cheesecake for dessert. I know, I KNOW! What was I thinking, giving sugar to the little hooligans? I just…it could have possibly been because I’d had some wine. Probably.

But wow, they sucked down that cheesecake. PJ just kept smiling like some kind of clown, so I finally asked him if he’d ever had cheesecake before.

“No, but I really liked it A LOT!”

And then there was some running around, and laughing, and then this:

Also the handiwork of One L Hooper.

But by 10:00 p.m., the sugar crash started setting in, so I recommended we switch to some low-key video-watching, to which they were amenable.

Lucky for us, we owned the movie and had already watched it a couple of times because, as it turns out, PJ had seen it too. In fact, he proceeded to earn the nickname “Captain Spoiler Alert” because he liked to drop little nuggets of knowledge, like “Eduardo is really El Macho, did you know that?”

Well we do now.

“Lucy’s going to jump out of the plane because she’s really in love with Gru!”

*pours more wine*

Then, something completely unexpected happened that has never happened in my house before. PJ, in an inexplicable moment of self-awareness said, “I think I’m ready for bed now.”

OHMYGOD, LET’S GET TO BED THEN!!!

Seriously though, Connor would just keep going and going, until he dropped right where he was. So just before 11pm, I got the two bleary-eyed party animals tucked into bed.

And then I prepared myself for the talking and laughing that was sure to ensue.

And there was much giggling and talking and shushing. BUT, it only went on for about an hour. By midnight, they were both out cold.

And no one got tattooed or lost teeth, yay!!

We got off SOOOOOO easy. I’m pretty sure next time won’t be nearly this low-key.